Sunday, April 03, 2005

The Dress Waltz -- Legend

-Composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith

This is actually not a bad soundtrack. The movie itself is about a young couple split by their own folly, trying to save the world from darkness by saving the last two unicorns from destruction. Well, it's the princess's fault that one of the unicorns is killed, and she then gets abducted by goblins and taken to Darkness who lusts after her and contrives to have her for his bride when he's turned the world into one of everlasting night. This song takes place as she is wandering alone in his lair/underground palace (light destroys him), and a black nymph in a dress appears and begins to waltz with her. At first she is frightened, but then she is overtaken by the music and the dance and joins, at the climax, she becomes one with the black nymph dancer and her tattered white robes transform into the dress that draped the sillhouette of the shadow creature. She then continues to dance under the spell of the music until the music ends and she lands before a mirror. Darkness then emmerges from the mirror and she falls to the floor in fright.

I love this song. It starts our with these high synthesized tones, some harp sounds, then a melody gently is coaxed from it. The music teases with an almost romantic waltz type feel, and then is punctuated by a repeated upward gesture of winds and downward of soprano voices (probably synthesized, don't know). It occilates between creepy motives and gentle dance melody, picking up momentum with each shift. The voices are used often to accompany the orchestral melody which is interesting, then the brass builds up and up and then the music dips down to low strings, out from which flies the melody soaring again and again to new heights to a wild frenzy that almost becomes obscene and banal as the voices seem almost to scream and yell and then there is a mysterious chime roll, and it is ended.